Atsushi Kamata grabbed an extinguisher and, along with other workers, quickly subdued the blaze.

But Mr. Kamata, a managing director at the manufacturer of cast-metal parts for car and electronics companies, says it didn't take long for the severity of the hurdles ahead to sink in. For six weeks, Mr. Kamata and his colleagues have struggled to repair badly damaged machinery, restore electric power and restart production of critical components for Toyota Motor Corp., BMW AG, Ford Motor Co. and other companies.

ENLARGE

A worker inspects auto parts at an Iwaki Diecast plant damaged by last month's earthquake. Production capacity has been largely restored.
Bloomberg News

Now, Iwaki Diecast can operate at nearly full capacity. But it is facing another problem: a lack of new orders as its customers work to get back on their feet and overcome other kinks in the supply chain.

Companies in Japan's disaster-hit northeast are lurching back to life. But as Iwaki Diecast shows, progress is uneven. And the strides that have been made have required considerable ingenuity and hard work.

The troubles of even small companies like Iwaki Diecast, with about 200 employees and four small factories in this small seaside town, can wreak havoc in interdependent global manufacturing industries. Automobiles, for example, contain tens of thousands of parts. A lack of just one can shut down an assembly line.

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Toyota said last week that parts shortages would keep its assembly lines in Japan operating at about 50% of capacity through June. Full production is unlikely to resume until November, at the earliest, the company said. Ratings service Standard & Poor's on Monday cut its outlook for Toyota, as well as Nissan Motor Co. and Honda Motor Co., whose Japanese output fell by more than half last month. Ford, meanwhile, again idled several assembly plants to contend with a part shortage.

"With the auto makers still not back to normal, our orders are a lot less," says Mr. Kamata, explaining that other parts of the supply chain are keeping his customers from ramping up production more quickly.

Computer-chip makers also are struggling to get production back to precrisis levels, which could hold back the recovery of a range of industries, including cars, appliances and consumer electronics.

Still, there has been considerable progress since the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Fuel shortages have eased, allowing truck traffic to ramp up, and train lines are reopening. Toyota last week restarted a rail link in northeastern Japan that carries parts to its assembly plants.

Electricity problems are also easing. Tokyo Electric Power Co. has said it doesn't expect to schedule more blackouts, which it had been using in response to electricity shortages caused by damaged power plants.

Lack of power was the biggest problem facing Iwaki Diecast in the days after the earthquake. Transformers routing high-voltage electricity for the plant were destroyed by the tsunami.

He and his colleagues searched for portable generators and the diesel fuel needed to run them. Eventually the company found nine, some supplied by Iwaki Diecast customers, that were trucked in from other parts of Japan.

Earthquake in Japan

When the generators arrived, about two weeks after the earthquake, managers tried to restart the system that melts aluminum and pumps it to casting machines through pipes running down the center of the factory.

What the workers found, however, is that when power was cut after the earthquake, the aluminum inside cooled and solidified. That created fissures in pipe joints, and when the system started back up, the remelted aluminum began to leak from the fissures. The maker of the factory's damaged equipment had to send technicians from Osaka, Japan, more than 200 miles away, to repair it.

As repairs continued, Iwaki Diecast starting bringing online machines that were in working order. The first fired up at the end of last month as managers scrambled to fill a Nissan order for air-conditioner parts.

But Iwaki Diecast realized it couldn't fill the order fast enough. The company sent one of the two 1.5-ton molds for the parts to a factory near Tokyo so that facility also could produce the parts.

ENLARGE

Auto production cutbacks are hurting suppliers that resumed operations. Above, an Iwaki Diecast employee grabbed a handful of parts this month.
Bloomberg News

The power company restored electricity on April 6. By last week, all of Iwaki's die-casting equipment had been fixed. On Wednesday, machines with yellow robot arms were churning out shiny aluminum parts for Toyota transmissions and suspensions.

Still, problems remain. The floor of the building housing precision tools used to manufacture intricate dies was damaged and needs to be shored up and releveled before that part of the operation can restart. There's also the issue of other companies in the supply chain struggling to catch up.

"I'm relieved now that the electricity is back and the machines have been repaired," Mr. Kamata says. "But now I'm worried about whether orders are going to come back."

He's hedging his bets—and holding onto three of the portable generators, just in case. "I get nervous every time there's an aftershock," he says.

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